Hello, I'm new to LinuxMCE and well Linux in general. I have it running at my house and for the security portion I have 2 IP cameras connected. My house has a Vista Panel based security system installed already and I want to have it communicate with LinuxMCE. Having found that the Vista ICM has been discontinued I went on the search to find something else. I stumbled open this website for a pruduct called AD2USB, which is a USB emulator that attaches to the VISTA panel as another keypad. I was wondering if this product would be able to attach the security panel and allow all its sensors to be seen by LinuxMCE. As I have limited experience in this arena, I was hoping someone with experience could take a look and see if they think it would work. I am too new to post links but if you go to nutech dot com go to products and select AD2USB you can find the details. There is also a forum section there with a community of people who use this product. If it does work I think it would help many others as I've seen other posts about this topic in the forum. Thank you in advance for any feedback.Jim

Due to the nature of the device, communication would only be one way, as opposed to the two way communication available via the ICM.

You would not be able to have changes at the panel propagate back to LinuxMCE, nor get sensor data from it.

-Thom

Hay Thom.

I am the designer of the AD2USB. Could you elaborate on the issue. I would very much like to see my device work with LinuxMCE I am a big fan of this project. I use LinuxMCE with zoneminder and adding support for my AD2USB would round things off nicely.

The device itself is a two way device to the alarm panel. It can arm disarm see events such as RF sensors or Zone expanders it also supports Virtual RELAY devices for even more advanced access to the alarm sensors and states. Communication to the device is simple via /dev/ttyUSBXX or via my open source ser2sock.c program you canshare the AD2USB to your entire local network.

Maybe I can send a unit or two to a few people who would be interested in building an interface?

Any interested developer can create a DCE device with the system, as all the tools are available.

You would need to choose either C++ or Ruby for your device code. Ruby is simpler, but C++ gives you complete control over the design of the device.

First, you need to define your device template. This specifies what the device is, where it should go in the device tree, what commands it can respond to, what events it can emit, device data it needs to function (this is variable, you create whatever parameters you need, baud rate, port, a place to store credentials, whatever..your code can read and/or set this block of info.), plug and play info (how to detect the device), what other devices this thing needs to function, and finally what additional orbiter screens this device will require (probably not used in your case)

This template is used by everything to determine what the device can do, and in the case of the C++ tools, it determines how to create the needed scaffolding code so you can fill in the blanks

As soon as you have a device template, please work with us on checking it into sqlCVS as soon as possible. The code can come later.

You can look at the VistaICM2 device template, for reference, and I suggest you do so.

For Ruby, you would enter the code as part of the device template itself.

For C++ You would need to:

* Check out a copy of http://svn.linuxmce.org/svn/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/src* install the pluto-sql2cpp and pluto-dcegen packages via apt* copy the contents of /usr/pluto/lib into src/lib* go into src/DCEGen* run /usr/pluto/bin/DCEGen -d <xxxx> where <xxxx> is your device template #* go into src/sql2cpp* run /usr/pluto/bin/sql2cpp to generate the necessary constants for your new device template.* go to the web admin, and go to wizard > security, and create your new security device, reload router, get the device #* go to src/Your_New_Device_Template (the path is a _ version of the device template name)* look at it..edit it...compile it with make bin* run it with ./Your_New_Device_Template -d xx (where xx is your DEVICE # in YOUR DEVICE TREE)* test it* go back to look at it...edit it...compile it...as many times as necessary.

Again, here I also suggest looking at the code in src/VistaICM2 for reference.

I have looked over the Current VistaICM2 code and wiki and it seems it was necessary to use C++ ( my preferred language ). In my case the GSD is all that is needed to communicate to the AD2USB. It looks like this approach is much better for the end userand future customization.

You mentioned a template for the current VistaICM2 module I have done some digging and was not able to locate this file. Could you point me in the general direction.

From my reading of various wiki pages it seems that the Ruby code is stored in the InfraredGroup_Command table. I would like to read some examples of Ruby code written using the GSD base classes but again I am not clear where they are in the svn tree.

I am the designer of the AD2USB. Could you elaborate on the issue. I would very much like to see my device work with LinuxMCE I am a big fan of this project. I use LinuxMCE with zoneminder and adding support for my AD2USB would round things off nicely.

The device itself is a two way device to the alarm panel. It can arm disarm see events such as RF sensors or Zone expanders it also supports Virtual RELAY devices for even more advanced access to the alarm sensors and states. Communication to the device is simple via /dev/ttyUSBXX or via my open source ser2sock.c program you canshare the AD2USB to your entire local network.

Maybe I can send a unit or two to a few people who would be interested in building an interface?

Re Sean M

Hi Sean,

I'd be interested to know whether your AD2USB interface will work with Honeywell Galaxy alarm panels?